Connecting Flight
by stefanie bean
Summary: Jack and Kate pass through the door. (Two-shot; Part 7 of "Tales from the Bardo," where the Losties make their way through the flash-sideways, struggling with themselves, their pasts, and their karma.) COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

**Connecting Flight (Part 1)**

Jack was his name. As he takes the woman's hand in his, he remembers her own. Katherine Anne, good Kate, sweet Kate. She carries her name as he did his, an item of clothing to be discarded when the time comes.

They are the last to file out of the church pew and into the most beautiful light he has ever seen. Earlier, as they sat together in the pew, he saw it only as a reflection in her eyes. Now he looks at it full on. Light without heat surrounds him, light the color of an overcast midday sky, as sun fills the clouds full of glowing milk.

He can keep the name of Jack if he likes, the light seems to say, but there is no rush. Up ahead, the others before them have vanished into the white. Her hand still fills his, even if the rest of her smears like someone caught in motion in a photograph. She had always moved too swiftly, hadn't she? Too fast for him to keep up with. Too quick of movement, which made her blur. Yet her fingers still remain in his, all warm, substantial, real.

He strains through the brightness for a glimpse of his father, but only bright rolling clouds unfold before him. Wind ruffles his hair, as Kate's flutters like a brown banner of victory across the marble arch of her shoulders.

Up ahead, his father leads their little band through. "Not leaving," he had said. "Moving on." A picture forms in Jack's mind of the first time he ever flew on an airplane. His mother explained to his five-year-old self that no, clouds weren't springy like cotton, and if you tried to walk on them, you would fall tens of thousands of feet to the hard earth below. His childhood hands gripped the armrests tightly, suddenly aware of all the empty air beneath his seat.

Now he sails through clouds without effort, propelled only by his body, steered only by Kate's confident hand. No childish dream this, but waking. No illusion, but reality.

The white splits, rolled aside by a flash of silver-dark lightning. Kate squeezes his hand hard, and he can't blame her, because all at once they're in an airport. The large main terminal of Los Angeles International Airport, to be exact.

The old part of Jack lets out a sigh of disappointed resignation. Here he is again, a gerbil spinning to nowhere, a painted pony on a carousel. The unturning axis is always found in this place, the center around which everything pivots.

The ground hits Jack's feet with a sharp shock, like getting off a ski-lift. In the midst of the busy terminal, he almost collides with his father.

Christian gives him a warm, sympathetic look. "Back on the wheel," he announces as casually as if reporting the weather. "That's okay, son. You picked well." He adds to Kate, "You too."

Picked what? Jack has no time to ask, because Kate gives his arm another strong tug. The terminal throngs with people, some in the long single ticket queue, some sitting in clusters as they talk, laugh, cry. The automatic doors slide open to welcome a few latecomers.

"Look," Kate says. "No security. No TSA scanners."

Christian's eyes crinkle in a smile. "No need, dear."

One by one, familiar faces sort themselves out of the crowd. His mother. Grandma Jeanne and Grandpa Ray, their arms around each other. His old friend Mark.

Kate whispers, "Daddy," and points to a tall, greying man in full-dress uniform.

Jack touches her arm lightly. "Take as long as you need."

As Kate weaves her way through the crowd, Christian says, "Don't forget to pick up your ticket, kiddo."

"Ticket?"

Christian chuckles. "Well, you _are_ in an airport. Come on, it's this way."

All along the main concourse are set up cafe tables, instead of security lines. Carole Littleton sits at one with his own mother, both of them deep in conversation, their faces washed with happiness. As Christian and Jack pass by, they spring to their feet. After Jack kisses Margo, she and Carole sit down again with Christian.

Jack looks around for the ticket line. There's only see one airline company in the entire terminal, with only one agent, and Jack would have known him anywhere.

Hugo's long, curly hair tumbles over meaty shoulders made even broader by an Oceanic Airlines suit jacket. As he hands out one ticket after another, he makes "Have an awesome flight" sound like he genuinely means it.

Someone pokes Jack from behind, right in the ribs. "You rusty old sawbones. Never thought I'd see you again."

"Frank," Jack breaths out. "Didn't recognize you in civvies."

Frank Lapidus glances down at his bright blue Hawaiian shirt. "I don't have to pilot this one." After a beat he adds, "Thank God."

Before Jack can ask what Frank means, Frank points to the down escalator. "Well, looky. Here comes the crew now."

Desmond Hume glides down, surrounded by three flight attendants, each one more graceful and elegant than the next. Wearing a small and distant smile, he gazes out over the women's sleekly-coiffed heads as they descend.

"Nice work if you can get it," Jack remarks.

Frank laughs from deep down. "Penny always dead-heads on these flights. She's probably already on board."

The line moves along at a normal clip, even though the line is long and Hugo is working alone. In the meantime, Jack studies the stranger in front of him, a middle-aged Asian man with a face wide and open as Hugo's own, his cheeks criss-crossed from smile lines and long days in the sun. With him waits a young woman in her twenties.

When the man and young woman start speaking, Jack recognizes the Korean, and can even pick out a few words like, "Grandpa," "It won't be long," and finally, "Ji Yeon."

Ji Yeon. The name stabs him with sweetness and pain.

"They have a little girl," Kate once said. The little girl has grown now, a beautiful woman in a pink linen sheath, her up-swept hair graced with a coral comb. That couldn't be Sun's father with her, though. Jack remembered the squat, scowling man at the Honolulu air force base when the Oceanic Six returned. This wasn't him.

He gazes back at the snaking line. A few dozen places behind him, Jin and Sun hold hands, and at once Jack knows that he stands behind Jin's father. Over by a waiting area Kate talks energetically with her parents. No more wheelchair for Kate's mother, and no oxygen cannula fixed to her nose. Now Diane stands hale and straight-backed, her arm linked in her daughter's, their faces close.

Kate will get in line when she's ready, Jack tells himself. There's all the time in the world.

Only a dozen people separate him from the counter, and he's close enough to see how those who come away clutch their tickets as if it's their most precious possession. Not only is there no security, no one has any luggage, not even a purse or carry-on bag. Jack remembers earlier ticket windows, tapping his foot impatiently, hating the delays, the wasted time, quailing inside as he recalls quarreling with harried airline workers over seating, bumped flights, Oceanic losing his father's body. In this line, though, Jack's impatience is gone.

Up ahead Claire takes her turn, without an infant in arms. As Hugo leans in to speak with her, he draws a curtain of intimacy around them even in the midst of the throng. The wheezing old printer clunks away at Claire's ticket, while she and Hugo continue to talk, their heads almost touching, Eventually Hugo slides her ticket into a sleeve of green paper, and hands it to her with a smile pink and warm as sunrise.

After Ji Yeon and her grandfather move aside, it's Jack's turn to step up.

Hugo types away on a 1980s-vintage keyboard, and his tie is studded with tiny suns, each bearing a set of feathered wings. "Hang on a second, there." A few more taps, and he looks up from the screen. "Awesome, just like I thought. This is your lucky day, Jack, 'cause I'm gonna offer you an upgrade."

"An upgrade? What, to first class?"

"I'm kinda pranking you, dude. I just always wanted to say that. Every seat on this plane's first-class."

For a second Jack balks, full of stubborn resistance laced with a thread of fear. "What is all this anyway, Hurley? What are we even doing here?"

Hugo gives a low chuckle. "You believed in me once, remember? Believe in me now. This is one flight you won't regret."

Jack takes a deep breath. "Okay, then. Just give me the ticket."

When the printer finishes clacking and whirring, Hugo places Jack's ticket in a sleeve riotous with embellished vegetation: ferns, vines, long-leafed cycads, palm fronds. Again the memory of a pounding heart hits him, the sudden dry mouth, how the stomach can tighten in excitement and anticipation. "What now?" he says. "Where do I go?"

Hugo gestures towards an enormous set of frosted-glass sliding doors. "When Jenna calls for boarding, head right through there."

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

All at once the delay presses on Jack like a weight. He wanders over to a coffee shop where Sawyer and Juliet sit at a cafe table, close enough to almost fit in each others' laps. Their bent foreheads touch, and every few sentences are punctuated with light kisses.

As Jack turns away, desolation at the prospect of another airplane flight opens inside him. With shame he remembers the ones in the month before his death; winces at the one prayer in his heart and mind. As if the only way to return was through destruction.

Well, the joke's on him, isn't it? A vision spreads out before him: six feet of sandy soil which conceals the body laid in a borrowed grave, the one dug by Ben Linus for his own use.

_You __can see __it anytime_, something just outside himself seems to say. _All you have to do is turn around and walk right out of this airport, b__efore it's too late. __Because once you board, that's it__._

_No thanks_, he answers back. At that instant, Kate walks into the coffee shop, glowing from sunshine, love, or both. Jack's last band of resistance snaps.

She slides her arm into his, presses against his side as if she's never left it, and her voice carries a laugh. "Look, they have white chocolate mochacchino. Now I know I'm in heaven."

Reaching for his wallet to pay for the drinks, he finds his back pocket empty. All he has are her smiling at his side, and the green ticket.

"Just sign here, sir," the barista says. "Any mark will do."

He finds himself drawing the small winged sun from Hugo's tie.

Skirting past faces known, familiar, or those of smiling strangers, they snag a table of their own. Even though the cafe is crowded, there's none of the usual airport rush and bustle.

"Hey, Jack, look over there." Kate nods towards a table where two young men in their twenties watch the crowds, pointing out people to one another with either surprise or delight. The taller, dark-haired one lightly jostles the shorter, thicker blond one, as if they share a secret joke.

Kate takes a long sip of her drink before setting it down. "Recognize them?"

"Aaron. But his friend, I don't—"

Kate laughs. "'Friend?' Look harder."

Jack's jaw drops. "It can't be. But Locke said..." His voice trails off, not denying the evidence of his eyes, yet not sure he can allow himself to believe it.

"Locke said what?" Whatever Locke thought about it clearly doesn't impress her.

"He said I didn't have a son."

"Oh, did he?"

Memories flood him of one night, the last one he ever spent in her arms. One look at her face, and he knows that she remembers, too.

She leans in close, her voice like breath in his ear. "Even if I forgot everything else... If I had to pick just one memory to take with me forever, it would be that."

He has never loved her more than at this instant, but before he can tell her, the two young men weave their way through the crowd to join them.

Jack stands up, not sure whether to shake their hands, hug them, or break down in tears, because David is no longer the boy of thirteen who ran off to his audition alone. All Jack can sputter is, "You're real."

"Dad, of course I'm real." David makes the decision for Jack as he wraps Jack in his arms, while Aaron looks on, beaming. "We may be dead, but we know what's what." Aaron sweeps his arm around the entire terminal. "No one gets to this point unless they do."

"But... how?" Jack stops short, because one look at Kate's face tells him everything he needs to know. A vague shame flickers through him, then flutters away. "I'm so sorry, Kate. I wasn't there for either of them. Or for you."

"You did what you had to." At that instant she seems lion-like, almost fierce. "After I helped Claire at the concert, I saw you on the lawn and it all came back. Hurley told me all of it: why you did it, what was at stake."

Jack tries to speak, but she brushes a finger lightly across his lips. Taking the young men's hands into hers, she says, "You weren't gone. You were there in both of them."

It's almost too big, too beautiful to believe. "So you... do you both have tickets, too?"

"We're just here to see you off. Mom, too." At Jack's stricken face David adds, "Don't worry, Dad. Flights leave from here all the time."

"This isn't good-bye forever, Uncle Jack," Aaron says. "Nothing here ever is."

David gives his cousin a small, friendly shove. "He always was the mystic."

All at once, a woman's crisp Australian accent crackles over the airport's speakers. It's time to board.

(_continued_)


	2. Chapter 2

**Connecting Flight ****Part 2**

The wide double doors to the boarding area slide open, and the hot desert winds which sweep through the terminal carry away Jack's brief flicker of fear. He pulls Kate close to his side, eyes wide in astonishment.

No concourse lies beyond the portal. Instead, a vast airstrip cuts a white line through gray hardpan baked by blazing sun, ringed by dark distant mountains.

During one of his desperate trans-Pacific flights, Jack made a connection in Singapore. His 737 taxied past a jetliner so enormous that it left him feeling even more dwarfed and insignificant than usual. An A380 "Superjumbo," it turned out. The plane which rests on this airstrip would make that monstrous plane seem small. A huge blazing sun emblazons its dorsal fin, and the stairs for boarding seem frail and insubstantial next to the plane's gleaming bulk. The cabin door appears as a tiny black dot.

Other than the gigantic airliner, the gate area is entirely empty. There's nothing else: no jet-fuel trucks, no luggage carts, no busy hum of safety vehicles to and fro. The concrete runway seems to stretch into infinity.

The crowd moves forward now as one, led by a single flight attendant. Another stands at the base of the boarding stairs wide enough to accommodate two or three people. They smile and beckon the crowd on.

Jack does a few silent calculations, not seeing how this ship is even going to get into the air. When he mutters that out loud to Kate, she answers in a dry voice, "You think it needs air to fly?"

He gives a small chuckle. Of course it doesn't.

Up close, the plane seems even more vast than from the gate. Far ahead of him, the first passengers begin their ascent. Jack knows his mother is afraid of heights, but she has already climbed halfway up, her arm laced in Carole's, both women smiling in the brilliant desert light.

Behind them follows his father, his arm around Grandpa Ray, and on his dad's other side, Grandma Jeanine. Jack stifles the sob which threatens to break out of his throat.

Everyone files up to those silver stairs as quietly and reverently as if in line for Holy Communion. Bernard helps Rose, followed by Sun and Jin, who turns to smile at their daughter and Jin's father. Charlie and Libby laugh and joke with Sawyer and Juliet, while Locke hesitates at the bottom of the stairs until Boone touches him lightly on the shoulder. At once Locke begins to climb.

When it comes time for Jack and Kate to board, Jack ascends a few steps, then turns around for one final look. Behind him stretches nothing but hard-pan desert. There is no Los Angeles Unknown terminal; no "unreal city" to support it. All that remains is the waste land, and mountains coiled around it tight as the serpent which eats its own tail.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

As Jack and Kate take their seats, he sees that the plane is already half-full of passengers. "Must be a connecting flight," he remarks.

Kate's too busy staring at the wide, comfortable seats to respond. "No safety belts," she muses. Pointing overhead, she adds, "No oxygen masks, either." They look at one another for an instant, then burst into laughter at the same time.

"You get used to it real fast," a woman waiting behind him says. It's Rose, with Bernard close behind her.

Jack almost laughs out loud. "We've got to stop meeting in airplanes like this, Rose." People move up and down the aisle in a graceful dance, without shoves or rushing.

"Time to take your seat, sir," the flight attendant says. The last time Jack saw her, she wore brown homespun, her hair tied up with beads and ribbons. Now she stands scrubbed and efficient in her uniform. Her name tag reads "Chandler," and her jacket lapel bears a tiny golden sun with wings.

Before he can ask, "Cindy, where are we going?" she's already begun urging passengers in the next row to settle themselves in for the flight. Further down, Hugo navigates his bulk through the aisle, helping the flight attendants seat people, clapping some on the shoulder, shaking hands with others, accepting thanks and giving some out.

There's no announcement from the pilot, no flight-safety talk, only Cindy's Melbourne-accented instructions over the intercom to prepare for take-off.

Without arm-rests, it's easy to nestle into Kate's side. Intense light fills the window, obscuring any view of the faraway mountains. It's not until the plane begins to move that Jack misses the sound of jet engines. The craft gains speed, then more, until everything whooshes by in a blaze of motion.

He glances over to Kate, worried that this gliding rush might frighten her, but her exhilarated face breaks into a grin at the tiny bump which signals that they've taken to the air. The steep climb pushes them back into their seats, and to Jack it's everything he remembers from roller coasters, from sledding full speed down a steep hill, from forcing himself as fast as he could go in speed-skating: the same heart-soaring feeling of unimpeded motion.

On they fly. Kate curls up against him, eyes closed. Cindy wheels a cart past his row and offers him a drink. When he nods, she pours water from a decanter into a goblet and sets it on his tray table. The cut crystal shines as if lit up by the water inside. As he sips it, she waits for a reaction.

It's like he's back on the Island, at that river's edge with Jacob, downing the contents of a tin cup. The tiny sip goes down like cold, clear light. It's from there, it has to be. To Cindy he says, "This is for everyone? Not just Hurley and I?"

Cindy nods, then moves on.

Kate stirs at the sound. He shares the goblet with her, not from thirst, because they will never be thirsty again, but because seeing the light awaken in her eyes as she drinks brings him so much happiness that his chest aches.

He leans back to rest not from fatigue, but because the waves of light which wash through him fill him with clarity and peace. Kate nestles back into his side, and as he strokes her hair it strikes him how real it feels, how solid and substantial. Far more real than his old life, which stretches behind him like a long sunset shadow, as the plane puts unimaginable distance between him and what came before.

Idly he wonders if they will fly on forever. Is this it, to sail through endless clarity with Kate at his side?

Loudspeaker crackles break the silence, followed by Desmond's Glasgow patter. "Time for landing, everyone. And if I don't say so myself, it's a beautiful day, clear and fine."

As the plane banks to the right, Jack shakes Kate's shoulder, even though he hates to disturb her deep, silent reflection. "You have to see this."

Below the clouds, a clear horizon kisses the blue ocean. The plane banks again, to the left this time, and some people on the other side of the plane murmur or chatter in low tones. A rising excitement fills the cabin.

"Jack? What's going on?" Kate presses her face against the window, which shows only sea and sky.

"Get ready for descent, everyone," Desmond says over the speaker.

As the plane heads downwards, it banks again to the right, and the reason for the general excitement swings into view.

Jack would know the Island anywhere, yet this is more the Island than the Island ever was. It doesn't seem possible, but the mountains are steeper, the foliage full of deeper greens, the beaches wider and the surf more blue than he remembers. The plane swings around mountains taller than skyscrapers, with silver waterfalls cascading down their sides. With the mountain range behind them, they pass through a valley so broad that even this enormous plane could land in it with room to spare. Streams of lava pour off seaside cliffs and hit the water in billows of steam, forming new land before Jack's eyes.

Desmond circles again, as if wanting to give everyone an eyeful before landing. Wider and wider he spins, until the Island itself seems like another Australia, a continent in its own right.

That must be Penny on the speaker, talking to her husband in the background. "I can never get used to how big it is."

"Bigger yet when we land," Desmond answers.

"Speaking of which," Kate asks Jack. "Where are we going to land? I don't see an airfield anywhere."

"That valley, I think."

"But how—"

As Jack thinks of something to say to ease Kate's doubts, the leather of the aisle seat across from him rustles as Hugo lowers himself down heavily. He's lost the Oceanic blazer and his shirt sleeves are rolled up, as if he's ready to get to work. "That is so awesome," he says in a low voice. "You know, Jack, you and Kate, you're gonna get off first." When Kate shoots him a sharp look, he adds, "You're kinda like the welcoming committee."

Jack's laugh holds only a trace of the old scoff. "I've never been here before. How am I going to welcome people?"

"It's more like, you know, an honor. 'Cause of, you know."

Hugo must mean protecting the Island. Still, Jack hesitates. "Even if I only did it for under twenty-four hours?"

Hugo heaves himself to his feet. "You know what they say, dude. Quality, not quantity. Remember, you and Kate deplane first."

Cindy's brisk and professional voice comes over the intercom. "Thank you, everyone. It was wonderful having you on board."

For the first time, the plane hums with a fine vibration beneath Jack's feet, the faint thrum more like the tuning of some distant orchestra. Through Kate's window the scooped-out, scalloped mountains rise impossibly close; the jet's wings should clip them and yet they don't. Soon the mountain gaps widen and it turns out that Kate was right, as the plane nestles itself into the wide arms of a green valley.

There's no one to bring the great silver stairs to the plane's side, and yet there they are. Jack steps into the warm, sweet breeze as a cloak of golden sunlight drapes over him, and the glory which surrounds him reflects in the mirror of Kate's eyes.

At the bottom of the stairs they file past him, hundreds or more, it seems, many of whom he doesn't know but he will; many whom he remembers from after the crash. And the ones who didn't make it are there, too. He knows their names from that bleak night when he sat alone and apart, as Claire recited them in the ghastly yellow light of the greasy fuselage fire. The lost ones who never made it to the Island, and yet here they are, their faces bright with wonder.

When the stairs finally empty of people; when the throng spreads out over the valley hugging, talking, laughing, even singing here and there, Jack looks up. The only person who hasn't descended is Hugo, and for a crazy instant Jack is back on that windswept cliff-side, back to his desperate thought that Hugo only stayed with him because he couldn't make it down to the sea below.

He signals to Kate that he'll be back, just wait. The climb seems to take no time at all. Hugo's wide smile is as broad as the valley itself as he says, "Man, this view never gets old."

"What about you?" Jack gestures to the broad green path that leads to the sea.

"What _about_ me?"

"I'd think you'd have," and here Jack struggles for the right word, settling finally on, "earned it."

"Well, it's like this. There's still some people who weren't ready. They're gonna need me to, like, be there when they are."

The hug envelops Jack like the solid reality of the Island itself, big and bountiful. This land will always be here, always has been, and after Hugo brings the last few stragglers, the sky will close. There will be no path back, only forward, but into what, Jack can't begin to imagine. Every step, every landscape, every face, all arrange together in the whirling dance with no end.

As Jack clears the stairs, he catches sight of Kate on ahead, her arm linked with Claire's, their heads close as they share speech mixed with laughter. He's about to head towards her when a blur of movement zips through the throng like yellow lightning.

A bounding dog races towards him at top speed, tongue lolling, eyes crackling with energy. Vincent almost bowls Jack over as he knocks into him with one crash after another, every wriggle a sermon of love.

Jack crouches down, letting the dog lick his face, his neck, his hands. Vincent was there at the end, and now here he is, at the beginning. It fits.

After Vincent stops cleaning Jack's face, through his doggy grin he says in a gruff voice, "Hey, boss. Welcome home."

(_the end_)


End file.
